injuries

January 18, 2012

PHILADELPHIA — It’s not unreasonable to believe that David Stern is the greatest commissioner in the history of American major league sports. A lawyer by trade with a background in marketing, Stern took over the NBA from Larry O’Brien—the James Buchanan of commissioners—and ushered the game into a new era.

Actually, Stern had plenty of help. It just so happened that Stern became the commissioner just when Larry Bird and Magic Johnson were coming into their primes, plus, Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, Hakeem Olajuwon and John Stockton entered the NBA during Stern’s first year as commissioner.

But give the guy credit for not sitting idly by. Under Stern’s watch, the NBA went from being a league that only serious basketball fans followed to an American-based Premier league of sorts. Internationally, the two most popular team sports are soccer and basketball and that comes in no small part from Stern’s ability to market his league.

That doesn’t mean the league is not without its flaws. After all, since Stern took over the NBA, labor peace has been virtually non-existent. In fact, there have been four player lockouts, including one in 1999 that left the league with a 50-game regular season and this year’s lockout that has teams playing 66 games in four months.

So when Stern turned up in Philly for a media session before the game against the Nuggets, one of the biggest topics was the condensed season and players’ health.

“I can tell you that we had the same short training camps in the last lockout, so I don’t think that’s the problem,” Stern said during the press conference. “As for the injuries, I reserve the right to see how things play out over the next few weeks before I draw any conclusions. I will take a look at the data and then I’ll call you.”

The idea when creating the condensed schedule was to come as close to representing a full, 82-game season without playing 82 games. When the league had its 50-game season, it was too short.

“When we got together with the player representatives and made the deal, I knew that if we got it done that (Thanksgiving) weekend, we could start on Christmas and we could play 16 games every 28 days, rather than 14 games every 28 days,” Stern said. “To us, the two extra games, to get in as much as we could of the season was important, so people wouldn’t say, ‘Oh, it isn’t a representative season.’”

Stern says fans love the condensed schedule. Coaches must hate it because of all the injuries and beat up players left in the wake, but this NBA season feels like a baseball season in that there is a decent game on every night. In fact, Sixers’ coach Doug Collins told us before the game in New York that he felt like a baseball manager with all the travel and games, but so little practice time.

“You win and you lose,. People say, ‘You have too many games,’ or, if you go to 50 games, as we did before, then you get told that you are not having enough,” Stern said. “We thought the 66 games were do-able. It seems to be doing OK. We’re pretty pleased with it. From the fans’ perspective, I’ve had people telling me, it’s great, you go home and there are all these games on League Pass, and so our fans are loving it.”

From a journalists’ perspective, the season is a blast. There is tons of action and when we get home from the arena, the west coast games are burning up the TV.

However, it’s no fun writing about injuries and it’s also not much fun to see ballplayers gimp around in the locker room before and after games. Sometimes, a players’ health dominates the news end of things and we get stuck writing speculative stories about when someone will return.

Injuries are also a drag on the quality of play, too. At its best, basketball is unlike any other sport. Sometimes a basketball game is a prize fight, a ballet and a chess match all rolled into one and when players are injured, it takes some of the fun out of it.

November 08, 2010

We all remember how it was when Mike Schmidt announced his retirement from playing baseball. Better yet, when Schmidty told everyone he was done that day in San Diego in 1989, there was no mistaking the intent. Sure, the blubbering, the emotion and the cracking voice were dead giveaways that he meant business. Oh, but there were better indicators than just the crying and carrying on.

Think about it… who wakes up in the morning and puts on a late-‘80s styled suit straight from a Tom Cruise movie, and then arranges his hair in a supremely coiffed feathered ‘do if they didn’t mean business. If I remember correctly, the theme from Miami Vice played Schmidt out of the room when the presser was over.

However, neither the walk-off song nor the fat lady has begun to sprinkle out those first notes for Jamie Moyer’s exit. No way. Baseball’s most elderly statesman isn’t going to give up the ghost of his career without a fight. That wouldn’t be his style.

So noting that Moyer reportedly suffered an injury last weekend while pitching in his third winter league game in the Dominican Republic last weekend with his 48th birthday next Friday, it’s reasonable to think that the old man is done. Add in the fact that Moyer jetted off to California to visit with renowned orthopedist Dr. Lewis Yocum because of an injured elbow that reportedly swelled up to the size of a golf ball, and maybe this is how it finally all goes down.

Then again, that’s way too easy.

While the results of an MRI on his elbow are still unknown, those simply writing off the cagey, 24-year veteran lefty should think for a second. Hell, the easy thing to do would be to retire and that was something Moyer has had plenty of chances to contemplate. Considering that he’s been flat-out released three times, allowed to take free agency three more times, and then sent back to minors three more times on top of that. Even his father-in-law, former basketball coach Digger Phelps, told him to retire and go back to school. In other words, Moyer has had his chances to take the easy way out—there has been no shortage of easy exits.

In fact, there was the time he sat in his hotel room in Anaheim waiting to go to the ballpark to pitch in a meaningless game for the Mariners in mid-August, that Moyer says he and his wife had a 90-minute conversation over the phone about whether or not it was time to pack it in. The idea of playing another season with a mediocre team with no shot to realistically compete for a World Series was just too much for him to bear.

Enough was enough, he thought, until he was offered an interesting proposition…

“A couple of days later they came to me and said, ‘Hey, want to be traded?’” Moyer recounted earlier this year.

Five days after that phone conversation with his wife, Moyer was pitching for a Phillies team that was preparing to make the greatest post-season run in their history. Better yet, he was the pitcher who got the most wins during the past four years.

Still, Moyer has never been through the things he’s been faced with over the past 12 months. Last November he had three different surgeries to repair a torn groin and abdominal issues and even ended up in the hospital last Thanksgiving to clean up an infected blood clot. But even that wasn’t enough to keep him from reporting to spring training on time.

Then shortly after the All-Star Break, Moyer hurt his elbow in the first inning of a game in St. Louis, where the diagnosis was a sprained ulnar collateral ligament and a strained flexor pronator tendon. Typically the course of action for that type of injury is Tommy John surgery. However, because Moyer and John had careers that overlapped by four years, such an invasive surgery would have ended it all.

Instead, Yocum prescribed rest and Moyer followed it to the letter before he was given the go-ahead to begin throwing again. During the NLCS it wasn’t uncommon to see the old lefty in the bullpen throwing pitch after pitch in attempt to rebuild his strength and to prepare for the winter league season.

So to think that Moyer would give up so easily after heading to the Dominican Republic to pitch against up-and-comers and players looking to get more at-bats or innings says something about the man. Better yet, it’s about time people accept the fact that Moyer isn’t pitching for stats, money or fame. Sure, he has an ego like anyone else and chances are that if Moyer was digging ditches for a living and could retire whenever he wanted and remain independently wealthy, he’d do it. But Moyer loves the game. He loves pitching and he loves to compete. Still defiant and engaged in a fight with those who are resigned to accept outcomes and convention wisdom, it’s clear that Moyer’s goal was to keep pitching until it was no longer physically possible. He wasn’t slowing down and he wasn’t taking shortcuts, either.

He never lost it.

But he’s not blind, either. He’s not wishing for a perfect, lucky outcome in order to take one more spin around to celebrate some type of victory. Why should he? Moyer has faced his every day in baseball with a cold, hard shot of reality and that defiance. He’s celebrated the mundane and taken joy in the unbelievable fortune that comes to those who are lucky enough to throw a baseball for a living.

He wasn’t granted any shortcut when the Cubs, Rangers and Cardinals placed him on waivers, and he’ll be damned if he’s going to accept one now.

“Because once it’s over it’s over whether I just plain retire or if it’s due to an injury,” Moyer said after his injury in St. Louis. “I’ve always said that when that last day comes, I’m done.”

The truth is that for the better part of the past four decades, Moyer has played baseball, so why stop now?

“Some players get injured and others just lose the desire,” Moyer told me during a conversation in Washington two years ago. “Then some, for one reason or other, are told to quit because they reach a certain age or time spent in the game. Some just accept it without asking why.”

Moyer never accepted it. That’s why he won’t accept it this time unless Dr. Yocum tells him otherwise. No tears, no speeches, no nothing. Just baseball.

August 12, 2010

From the way Charlie Manuel explains it, he’s an organic kind of guy. In baseball there is a natural ebb and flow of things that Charlie doesn’t like to mess with. With its rhythms and whatnot, a baseball season unfolds a certain way for a reason so when there is anomaly that pops up, Charlie rarely bats an eye.

For instance, if a player comes out of the gate hitting everything in sight and posting huge numbers, Charlie doesn’t get too excited. Just wait, he says, everything will even out as long as nature is allowed to work its course. After all, it would be silly to sprint the first mile of a marathon with 25 miles left.

Pace yourself.

So with Shane Victorino back with the team after going 6-for-8 with a homer, triple and four RBIs in two Triple-A rehab games, and Chase Utley cleared to resume his hitting drills while Ryan Howard was back to taking grounders, don’t get too crazy with excitement yet. Charlie says there will be a period where the players will have to knock off some rust.

It won’t be the players’ fitness or skills that will be the issue, the skipper says. It will be the hitters’ timing. As Charlie explains, it often takes a player more time to recover his timing at the plate and his in-game conditioning. Sometimes just gripping a bat feels a bit weird even though the hits could be dropping in. As a result, a late-season injury to guys like Howard, Utley or Victorino might not be the boon logic would dictate.

On the plus side, the Phillies will have some depth.

“I feel like when we get everybody healthy our bench definitely should be as strong as it’s been all year,” Charlie said. “Without a doubt.”

That’s the only doubt Manuel doesn’t have. Otherwise he’s full of them. Baseball managers always are—even successful ones like Big Chuck. Truth is, calling them “managers” is a misnomer this time of year considering there is very little they get to manage at all. With the Phillies it has been about the injuries as well as some inexplicable ineffectiveness with the bullpen. Sure, Brad Lidge appears to have it together despite a bit of a dip in the velocity of his fastball, but the club’s lone lefty, J.C. Romero, is dealing with some strange “slow hand” phenomenon.

“I still, to a certain extent, don't understand what the problem is,” Charlie said about his lonely lefty. “We have to find out about it.”

See what were saying about “managing?” How can anyone have a say over a guy whose arm is moving faster than his hand? Perhaps it could be Romero’s mouth is working faster than his brain in this instance?

But don’t think for a minute Charlie would trade his injuries for the one Braves’ skipper Bobby Cox is dealing with, or for the craziness Mets’ manager Jerry Manuel has going on with his closer. After all, Victorino can go out there and play tonight while Utley and Howard should be back before the end of the month. Actually, the toughest decision Manuel has looming is whether or not to keep top hitting prospect Dom Brown in the majors or send him back to Triple-A for the final week(s) of the International League season.

Certainly there are some big issues concerning the Phillies, like what they are going to be able to do about the left-handed reliever problem. For now, we’ll just have to pretend that Ryan Madson is a lefty and hope he continues to strikeout left-handed hitters at a rate of 25 percent per at-bat. The righty handled two of the Dodgers’ toughest lefties in the eighth inning of a close game on Wednesday night and might find himself pushed into more righty-on-lefty action as long as Romero’s left hand continues to belabor the pace.

Still, no one with the Phillies was called down to the precinct house in order to post bail for the closer early Thursday morning. According to published reports, the Mets’ All-Star closer Francisco Rodriguez cursed at reporters before allegedly walking to another portion of the clubhouse where he was accused of committing third-degree assault on his 53-year-old father-in-law. The 53-year old went off to the hospital, while K-Rod was arraigned and released on $5,000 bail on Thursday.

With the rival Phillies headed for Queens this weekend, K-Rod likely will be serving a team-issued suspension. Meanwhile, ace lefty Johan Santana has been sued for rape by a Florida woman after authorities declined to prosecute.

In comparison, Charlie will take those injuries.

But certainly not the one that appears to cost Braves’ future Hall-of-Famer Chipper Jones the rest of the season. It came out Thursday that Jones tore the ACL in his left knee and likely will have season-ending surgery. If that’s the case, the first-place Braves will go into the final month of the season without their best hitter, who just so happens to be a Phillie killer, while hoping the aches and pains suffered by All-Stars Jason Heyward and Martin Prado relent enough so they can carry the load.

“When you think of the Atlanta Braves, the first guy you think of is Chipper Jones,” Braves’ GM Frank Wren told the Associated Press. “His presence in our lineup has been increasing based on his performance the last couple of months. He was a force. So, yeah, we're losing a lot.”

So put this way, the Phillies might be coming together just in time. Considering spring training lasts approximately six weeks, Charlie’s boys ought to be running at full steam in time for the last week of the season.

April 13, 2010

When the Phillies showed up for spring training two months ago, it was difficult to imagine the team not winning the NL East for a fourth season in a row. With the core group heading into its athletic and physiological prime and the addition of Roy Halladay to the top of the rotation, the over/under on wins was placed at 95 by the swells in Vegas.

The Phillies will hit unlike no other Phillies team ever and they have a horse that has piled up at least 220 innings the past four years.

Truth is, things are so rosy with the Phillies as its hitters have bludgeoned the Nationals and Astros in the first seven games, that no one wants to jinx anything. Come on… why bring up something like the potential for injuries and be a mush? Why do that when the Phillies have used the schedule to their advantage in order to rush out to the best record in baseball?

Injuries are a tricky thing because no one in sports ever knows how the body is going to respond. Your calf injury recovers at a different rate than someone like Jimmy Rollins. See, as a shortstop whose speed and quickness is what helped get him to the big leagues in the first place, the calf muscle is that much more important. That’s the muscle that is the engine for Rollins. A balky calf means Rollins doesn’t go from first to third when Placido Polanco laces one to right field or goes from first to home when Chase Utley bangs one into the gap.

And without Rollins at the top of the batting order the entire dynamic of the offense gets knocked off kilter a bit.

Oh sure, even if it turns out that Rollins has a Grade 2 sprain of his calf like a source told CSNPhilly.com’s Jim Salisbury on Monday and has to serve some time on the disabled list, the Phillies still will win the NL East. The same goes for Jayson Werth, who likely will miss a game or two with a sore hip that “grabbed” him during Monday’s victory over lowly Washington.

Thanks to some wise off-season acquisitions, the Phillies have Juan Castro to play short if Rollins goes out for a bit instead of Eric Bruntlett. The Phils also have Ben Francisco, Greg Dobbs or Ross Gload to play the outfield for Werth if he needs a few games off.

Sure, losing those players will sting a bit, but they only mask the real concern that could cause the 2010 season to blow up like one of those trick cigars in the cartoons.

The concern: what if Brad Lidge doesn’t get it back this year?

No, I’m no doctor and chances are I would have flunked out of medical school within a week of attending a single class. However, a late March cortisone shot into his sore right arm mixed with two rehab outings at Single-A in which he has allowed five runs, five hits, a walk and no strikeouts in 1 2/3 innings is attention grabbing.

Yes, Lidge is coming off yet another surgery—his third since joining the Phillies before the 2008 season—and it probably will take a bit for him to get back his strength. But what happens if he doesn’t get it back? Or let’s say he gets it back and turns in another year like he did in ’09 when he saved 31 games, but allowed 51 runs in 58 2/3 innings?

Then what?

Ryan Madson, the Phillies’ acting closer, says there are no worries on his end. In fact, he pointed out after getting his second save of the year on Monday, talk of a thin bullpen is an annual rite of spring around these parts.

If there is ever one thing guys like me like to pick at as if it’s a mealy old scab, it’s the Phils’ bullpen depth. Madson has noticed.

“Every year I've been here, it’s about the bullpen,” he said. “It’s our weakest link. You're going to have something that’s not like the lineup we've got.”

The thing about injuries is they give guys like Madson a chance. When they hear the chatter or the put-on panic about the team’s chances when a key player goes down it only serves to motivate. Besides, Madson says, the bullpen was another one of those areas where a couple of off-season acquisitions just might pan out. Veteran Jose Contreras is making the transition from starter to reliever and just might have the stuff to close out games if needed. Rule 5 guy Dave Herndon has been impressive in limited action.

So far this season the Phils’ relievers have allowed just three runs with 18 strikeouts in 20 1/3 innings. That comes to a 1.33 ERA, which is second-best in the Majors.

“We’ve got plenty of arms out there that have been throwing the ball really well,” Madson said. “It will be nice when they get back, but for now, we've got good arms out there. We’re happy.”

There’s no reason not to be. Not yet, anyway. The Phillies have worked over the lowly Nats and Astros, but that will change soon when they get deeper into the schedule.

That’s when we find out just how costly those aches and pains really are.

October 23, 2009

One of my favorite things about writing about sports is knowing something but still not being able to write about it. Call that a quirk or just an example of an off-kilter sense of humor because there are a lot of guys who get all bent about things like that.

Take the case of Raul Ibanez, for instance. A whole bunch of us knew that he was hurt/injured and that he was playing even though he was in obvious pain.

Just watch the guy run, for goshsakes. His form is all over the place like he's compensating for the pounding one takes with each painful footfall. Swinging a bat couldn't be easy, either. Just look at the difference between those first and second-half numbers for that proof.

Or better yet, when Raul first arrived in town he was always a fixture in the clubhouse before and after games, but during the second half of the season those clubhouse sightings were rare. It was deduced that he was getting treatment or going through a series of stretches, twists, shots or potions in order to get out on the field.

We didn’t know any of this because no one was saying anything. Even when Raul or Charlie Manuel were asked—point blank—if the left fielder was hurt, injured or needed surgery, the answer was always elusive and ambiguous. The best answer was always something about not being on the list of players getting treatment from athletic trainer Scott Sheridan.

The truth was Ibanez was beyond such mundane things as basic treatment.

According to the story, rather than have surgery and potentially miss a large portion of the season he toughed it out as we all saw.

He batted .312 with 22 home runs in his first 2½ months, a welcome splash of cold water for a team still groggy from a World Series hangover. But by the third week in June, Ibañez was suffering from a sore left groin and, unbeknownst to the public, a small but serious muscle tear near his abdomen. On a trip to Toronto he was confronted with an excruciating decision: He could have surgery to repair the tear and miss a large chunk of time, or he could return after a short stint on the disabled list and play his dream season hurt. "We all asked him if he would have the surgery," Phillies first base coach Davey Lopes says, "and he told everyone, 'I won't do that. I'll do anything but that.'"

After consulting with a neuromuscular specialist in Toronto and a surgeon in Philadelphia, Ibañez chose the DL, followed by aggressive rehabilitation. Every day he drops onto a mat in the Phillies' clubhouse, performs core and hip exercises with trainer Scott Sheridan and then heads for the field. Lopes believes that Ibañez's swing, speed and statistics have suffered because of the injury—he batted just .232 with 12 homers in 72 games after coming off the DL—but his clubhouse cred clearly spiked. "A lot of guys in his position would have said, 'Oh, my God, I'll just have the surgery,'" says Phillies utilityman Greg Dobbs, who played with Ibañez in Seattle. "But he's the type who says, ‘You tell me I can't, then I will.’”

So there are a couple ways to look at this, such as we can laud Ibanez for his toughness and his pain management. These are admirable traits for athletes—especially Philadelphia athletes—as long as the team doesn’t suffer because of it. Though Ibanez hasn’t been himself during the second half of the season, he hasn’t been a drain on the team.

Give the guy credit for going out there as often as possible. Charlie Manuel is the type of manager who rides his regulars and Ibanez got no special treatment despite the injury. He said he was OK, so he played... no complaints.

Surely there are second half VORP numbers out there to confirm or deny this claim.

Conversely, it kind of stinks that Ibanez and the Phillies held back a story that the local guys had already sniffed out only to confirm it for Sports Illustrated. In the meantime all some of us could do was drop some not-so subtle hints and force readers to do some between-the-lines reading about the assumed injury. There are other examples aside from this one, but this is what stands out for the moment.

So yeah, we knew something was up. We knew there was something more than what was being trotted out there. But apparently it pays to be a part of the national media as opposed to li’l ol’ Philadelphia.

July 19, 2009

Nearly seven years ago, Eric Junge pitched five innings of a 4-1 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates in a meaningless September game. In fact, September of 2002 was one of the last few final months that were meaningless for the Phillies. In 2004 all that was left to decide in September was when they would mercifully pull the plug on the managerial career of Larry Bowa.

Those were the days when the pitching coach got punched in the face by a player, and some wondered if it was simply a matter of time until the manager suffered the same fate. Nope, those definitely weren’t the golden days of Phillies baseball.

More like Blood Sport.

Anyway, Eric Junge started and won his first Major League outing over the Pirates in rather dramatic fashion. See, Junge was finished pitching for the year after going 12-6 with a 3.54 in Triple-A in 29 starts, until then-GM Ed Wade called him at home in Rye, N.Y. in the middle of a pizza feast. The Phillies needed some fresh arms to get through the year and since the roster had expanded, Junge got a phone call inquiring whether he wanted to pitch in the big leagues.

Sure, Junge said, but first he had to cancel some plans.

Junge joined the Phillies on Sept. 11, 2002, exactly one year after that day. So instead of going down to Ground Zero with his trumpet to play a tribute to the three friends from childhood that died on 9/11, Junge was the Vet waiting to make his big league debut instead of “preparing to mourn and remember.”

“I would have been playing my trumpet, playing Taps. It's something I used to do on Veterans Day and Memorial Day. I would go down to the town square and all the veterans would be there,” he told us. “It would be my little way of saying thanks for our freedoms. Taps for me is emotional. I'd rather be pitching in the big leagues, obviously.

“I didn't think I would get called up," he said nearly seven years ago. “It's all kind of surreal. I was getting ready to mourn and now I feel alive.”

I remember that day for a lot of reasons. First, there weren’t too many games in the 2002 baseball season that were too memorable. Brett Myers made his debut at Wrigley Field, pitcher Robert Person hit a pair of homers and got seven RBIs in about two innings of a rout over the Expos, and Scott Rolen was traded.

Secondly, only two seasons into Bowa’s reign of terror, it was clear things had already come unhinged. Little did we know at the time that the franchise would have to take some decisive actions after some growing pains and old-fashioned time biding.

Otherwise, it was an underwhelming season.

But Junge was interesting. After he threw those five innings in which he gave up four hits and one run in his only big league start, I was all set to write about how he was the first Bucknell University alum to pitch in the big leagues since Christy Mathewson. Acquired in the Omar Daal trade with Los Angeles, Junge was the minor league surprise of ’02.

Instead of writing about the surprise start, the Mathewson angle and a promising future, someone saw three names scribbled on Junge’s cap while talking to him in the clubhouse after the game. The names “Fetchet,” “Mello” and “McGinley” were hard to miss there in black Sharpie just to the left of the Phillies “P” on Junge's cap.

What was the deal with those words, Junge was asked.

Those three guys were Brad Fetchet, Chris Mello and Mark McGinley, Junge told us. All three died on 9/11 at the World Trade Center during the attacks. Mello grew up with the pitcher and the two played baseball and football all the way from little league to high school. He died when his plane struck the north tower.

Fetchet and McGinley were Bucknell classmates of Junge who were working in the Trade Center that fateful day and didn't make it out.

Then there was Junge's dad Peter, who was standing on the street corner adjacent to the buildings when the first plane hit, which was carrying Mello. A maritime attorney with offices a block away from Wall St., Peter Junge was on his way to court when the unthinkable happened. Junge was eating breakfast in a waffle house in Huntsville, Ala., preparing to pitch for the Dodgers' Double-A club, Jacksonville.

“That was a hectic day,” Junge told us after his first Major League start.

It was a helluva story and forced a lot of us to re-do those Mathewson/Bucknell angles we were knee-deep in by the time we met with Junge. But aside from the emotional side of the story, there also was the work on the field. After all, it’s not every day a pitcher in his first big league start walks off with swagger. Junge might have been a surprise call up, but he was acting as if he belonged.

“Some guys might be apprehensive but he acts like he's been here for 20 years,” Bowa said after that game. “With his makeup, he wanted the opportunity and he opened some eyes. He was walking around the dugout yelling, ‘Let’s go!’ and getting everyone fired up.”

Junge’s big league career lasted just 10 games. In 2002 he got another win when Vicente Padilla exited a game after just 13 pitches and Junge came on in the first inning and went into the sixth.

But injuries derailed whatever future he might have had with the Phillies or a chance to return to the Majors with another club. In 2003 he was shut down after 16 games between the Phillies and Triple-A. When he came back from shoulder surgery, he pitched at three different levels in the Phillies’ organization before he was granted free agency at the end of the year.

Then came the life of the baseball nomad. In 2005 he pitched in Triple-A for the Mets and then released. In ’06 it was Triple-A with the Padres and then another release. For 2007 it was a handful of games in the independent Atlantic League until he wound up back at Scranton/Wilkes-Barre with the Yankees.

And then, of course, another release.

Junge spent 2008 in Japan pitching for the Orix Buffaloes, which was the former team of So Taguchi and Ichiro, as well as the organization that featured an American cleanup hitter named Chuck Manuel. They called Chuck, “The Red Devil.”

Now 32, the same age as former teammates, Marlon Byrd, Johnny Estrada, Geoff Geary, Nick Punto as well as a year older than his ex-third baseman, Chase Utley, Junge is still out there playing. As fate would have it, the lean, 6-foot-5 righty signed to play for a team with a stadium less than one-mile from my home as the crow flies.

Yeah that’s right, Junge was pitching for the Lancaster Barnstormers in the Atlantic League. The Atlantic League is baseball purgatory… or maybe worse. No matter, in his first month with the team the baseball lifer (think Chris Coste had he been a prospect) was the league’s pitcher of the month with a 4-1 with a 1.73 ERA and twice broke the franchise record with 12 strikeouts in a game. In 26 innings, Junge had 34 whiffs.

And then he was gone.

That’s what I learned this evening when I moseyed down to the ballpark with the kids to check out a game. I had hoped to see Junge, relive those days in Philly and see what’s shaking with Antonio Alfonseca, who is closing out games for the Barnstormers. However, Junge’s name was strangely omitted from the roster. A quick Google search later revealed he had left Lancaster to pitch for a team in South Korea.

How’s that for an indictment of the team, league and town? Junge would rather travel halfway around the globe to pitch in South Korea rather than for Tom Herr and Von Hayes in Lancaster, Pa.

You know, some days I know how he feels.

Nevertheless, good luck to Mr. Junge. Undoubtedly he could trade in the uniform for a career as a good baseball exec, but let’s hope his baseball journeys pay off with a trip back to the big leagues or at least some pretty kick-ass stories. He certainly gave us one seven years ago, and, as readers of the site know, it’s the stories that make the word go ‘round.

May 29, 2009

Brett Myers joins teammate Chase Utley, Alex Rodriguez, Mike Lowell, Alex Gordon and Carlos Delgado (amongst others) who have (or will) undergo surgery for a torn hip labrum. And that’s just in baseball. Kurt Warner of the Arizona Cardinals and Floyd Landis are two more notable athletes who had hip surgery recently.

That’s not all, either. Hip pain and injuries are the bane of distance runners and soccer players and it appears to have replaced the knee as the injury in baseball.

Of course shoulder injuries in pitchers are the biggest of the big, so the hip has a ways to go to catch up.

Nevertheless, with Myers acknowledging that he has to have hip surgery – whether it’s now or later is to be determined – the question has arisen about all the labral tears and hip surgeries.

What’s the deal with that? Is it something sinister or related to nefarious acts? Are these ballplayers built differently or doing something their predecessors did not?

Well, no.

Ballplayers in the old days had hip injuries and labral tears, too, only back then they called it a groin injury or some other catchall phrase. But with sports medicine and athletic training reaching new heights of insight and with technological advancements of the diagnostics, things like labrum tears and spurs are found much more easily.

Think about how many careers could have been saved if certain players were simply born in a different era. Or think about how much pain some players went through just to play their game. We know that tons of pitchers would have been able to have longer careers if Tommy John surgery had existed before 1975. That’s just one example – what was it like before arthroscopic procedures?

What if Mickey Mantle (for example) would have been able to have modern medical procedures instead of the slicing and dicing he underwent?

Anyway, Myers will need surgery and the consensus from a few medical folks who I described his situation to seem to think he will be best served to have the surgery now instead of later. Of course Myers is going to see Dr. Bryan Kelly, who just might be the Michael Jordan of hip ailments.[1] Clearly Dr. Kelly will steer Myers to the right path.

Nevertheless, a few medical folks seem to think that Myers’ shoulder injury from 2007 might have led to his hip problems. The reason they think this is because of the significant drop in the velocity of his fastball seems to point to Myers pushing off harder with his right leg in order to throw pitches as hard as he did before the shoulder injury. By having the surgery as soon as possible – and hoping that the damage isn’t too bad – Myers could be recovered in time for the stretch run and should be throwing as hard as he once did.

Of course Myers wants to pitch now. The best season of his career came when he pitched out of the bullpen when he pitched nearly every day in September of 2007. His durability was his strength and would have been attractive on the free-agent market this off-season.

The guy likes to pitch and even when he was in pain on Wednesday night, he didn’t want to come out of the game.

Certainly it makes the decision for Myers that much more difficult.

*
I watched Randy Wolf pitch for the Dodgers against the Cubs at Wrigley Field last night and it appears as if the ex-Phillie is finally 100 percent healthy. It was easy to think about Myers and the medical issues he faces when watching Wolf pitch. Several surgeries and lots of perseverance has Wolf looking like the strongest cog in the Dodgers’ rotation.

That 3-1 record and 2.84 ERA and .221 batting-average-against would look sharp for the Phillies these days.

Still, count on the Phillies being active on the rumor mill from here on out.

*
I missed this the other day, but last Tuesday was the 50th anniversary of the greatest baseball game ever pitched. That’s when Pittsburgh’s Harvey Haddix, a Phillie for two seasons, threw 12 perfect innings in Milwaukee, gave up a hit in the 13th inning and lost, 1-0.

April 14, 2009

It's an odd coincidence that two of baseball's greatest characters - Harry Kalas and Mark Fidrych - died on the same day. Maybe that's the way it's supposed to be in some sense... who knows. Maybe people better versed in spirituality, religion, science or whatever else can explain it.

Needless to say, Mark Fidrych's death kind of got lost in the shuffle here. When an icon dies - the pope of Philadelphia for a lack of better description - everything else kind of takes a backseat.

Besides, Mark Fidrych was a shooting star in the night in baseball. He was here for a moment - bright, shiny, beautiful and majestic - and gone. Snap... just like that. Fidrych owned baseball in 1976. He was the best pitcher in the game, started the All-Star Game for the American League at The Vet, won 19 games and then tore up his rotator cuff in 1977.

The thing about that was Fidrych had the gall to rip up his shoulder before the proliferation of arthroscopic surgeries. Undoubtedly the injuries that ended careers like Fidrych's are nothing more than out-patient procedures these days. High school kids have Tommy John surgery the way they used to rub their faces in Clearasil in the good old days.

If Fidrych only would have waited a few years to rip up his shoulder he might have had a longer career. He might have been around long enough to make enough money throwing a baseball so that he would not have had to return to Massachusetts and go to work as a contractor or help out at Chet's Dinner, owned by his mother-in-law.

But from all the stories, Fidrych probably would have done it the same way.

By now most people know all the stories about "The Bird." He was on the cover of Sports Illustrated AND Rolling Stone (back when that meant something) with that floppy Tigers' cap pulled over that crazy mop of curly hair with Big Bird. He talked to the ball, smoothed the dirt on the mound with his bare hands while on his hands and knees. He waved to the fans in the middle of the game and ran over to teammates to shake their hands after good plays.

Hell, he even told hitters where he was going to throw the ball and they still couldn't hit it. Charlie Manuel's old pal, Graig Nettles, tells a story about watching The Bird talk to the ball before delivering a pitch. As soon as he saw it, Nettles says he called time, hopped out of the batters' box and began talking to his bat.

"Never mind what he says to the ball," Nettles said he told his bat. "You just hit it over the outfield fence!"

But when Nettles struck out, he blamed the bat.

"Japanese bat," the story goes. "It doesn't understand a word of English."

I missed Fidrych's act. I was too young, but I caught bits and pieces of it at the very end when he staged one of his many comebacks with the Tigers. I also caught enough of the hype to understand what everyone was talking about, though how does one explain Mark Fidrych to people who missed it? How do you properly explain a pitcher who talked to the ball, told hitters where it was coming, yet still racked up 24 complete games and 19 wins?

Anyway, one part I remember was a game on TV at the end. It must have been in '79 back before cable TV when the Game of the Week was the only chance us D.C. kids had to see teams other than the Orioles, and Fidrych was talking to Tony Kubek before a game about his return. Needless to say, it was so much different than any other ballplayer interview.

Fidrych looked like he was actually having fun. He looked like he liked to play baseball. He smiled when he played and bounced when he ran. It was a game, right? It was supposed to be fun.

To this day there was never anyone like Mark Fidrych. If there was someone like him, that personality would be stamped out and pulverized before he reached the big leagues. But thankfully there was The Bird. When they showed him on TV, even all those years after that summer of '76, personality beamed from the set like trippy, psychedelic colors. It just oozed out there like dripping honey. Years later, any time there was a Fidrych sighting or even a story in a magazine, I stopped in my tracks and took notice as if in a trance.

Still, it was impossible to watch those old tapes and wonder about the "what if." What if he never got hurt? Would the game be different now? Would it be more fun?

Fortunately, the "what if" never got to The Bird. Years after his comet had streaked out of view, they found him in Massachusetts on his farm with that crazy curly hair and that big goofy smile. He was still having fun, only without the sellout crowds and the baseball in his right hand. When asked who he would have over for dinner if he could invite anyone in the world, Fidrych was as goofy as ever.

"My buddy and former Tigers teammate Mickey Stanley, because he's never been to my house," he said.

Fidrych reportedly died approximately an hour after Harry Kalas. But unlike Philadelphia's Voice, Fidrych was far away from the ballpark when his dump truck apparently fell on top of him. He was apparently working on his truck when it came loose and crushed him...

A strange ending for one of the neatest and pleasantly strange ballplayers ever.

March 18, 2009

CLEARWATER, Fla. – Cole Hamels is really, really good at getting injured. Actually, his ability to get injuries, pain, soreness, tweaks and twinges are the most consistent aspect of his pro career.

It’s what he does best.

Oh sure, Hamels also has a left arm that comes around maybe once a generation. He has an incredible knack to put together incredible stretches of games that conjure up memories of the all-time greats. Better yet it’s a Hall-of-Fame arm, which, if one asks Hamels straight out what he wants to accomplish with his baseball career, he’ll flat-out tell it without so much as blinking or a trace of arrogance.

The answer comes as if he had rehearsed it in front of a mirror for years…

He wants no-hitters, piles of wins, Cy Young Awards, a career that spans decades, and, of course, the Hall of Fame. The good part for the Phillies is that Hamels’ goals aren’t all that unreasonable. The odds are relatively favorable that the lefty could pitch a no-hitter or two or win a Cy Young.

But here’s the thing about that – Cole Hamels ain’t Steve Carlton. Hell, he’s not even Tom Glavine. Oft-injured lefty and changeup specialist John Tudor might be more like it.

June 20, 2008

The news from Boston today that Curt Schilling is headed for surgery to repair his right rotator cuff, labrum and biceps should not come as much of a surprise. When spring training began the question was whether or not Schilling would be able to respond to a rehab program and throw a pitch in a big league game before going under the knife.
Decidedly, the answer was no. No way.
Now, after Schilling has given up on the 2008 season as well as his tenure with the Boston Red Sox, a new question rears its head regarding the former Phillie:
Is it all over?
"There's a pretty decent chance that I have thrown my last pitch forever," the 41-year-old ex-Phillie said. "I don't want it to end this way, but if this is the way it has to end, I'm OK with that. If it's over and my last pitch was in the 2007 World Series, I'm OK with that. I just can't stress enough where I am mentally with this. I have not a regret in the world.
"None of this makes me bitter or angry. It is what it is. In that sense, honestly, it's very, very easy for me, because of what I've been able to experience compared to what I wanted when I first started my career. But if I have some say in how this is going to end, I want it to be different than what it is right now."
That much is obvious. After all, Schilling would not be having an elaborate surgery on Monday with Dr. Craig Morgan, the renowned shoulder specialist in Wilmington, Del. on Monday if he was thinking about hanging it up. Really, who has biceps tenodesis surgery (when the diseased biceps tendon is detached from the bone and reattached in another location) as well as arthroscopic surgery to determine if more surgery is needed to the labrum and rotator cuff if the only ball playing he does is with his kids in the yard? The rehab process for those surgeries is difficult for a guy just looking to handle the remote control with more alacrity, the fact that Schilling is going through with it means he wants to pitch again.
But whether or not Schilling will pitch again could be determined in Wilmington on Monday. According to Dr. Morgan, Schilling's future as a big leaguer depends upon what is found when the right-hander is scoped.
"The key issue there is frankly the rotator cuff," Morgan told The Boston Globe. "If he does not have significant rotator cuff involvement there's a good chance, even at age 41, that he can come back and pitch. But he must accept the fact that this may be career ending."
Schilling understands that last part very well.
"If I don't have surgery, my career is over today," he said.
Still even if the damage to his shoulder isn't severe and a return to the mound is not ruled out, Schilling knows the rehab process will be much more difficult. Age is the damndest thing - if Schilling were 10 years younger there would be no question that his career could continue in 2009. But even if everything goes perfectly and the tendons in the big right-hander's shoulder turn him into the $8 million man again, the fact that he was born in 1966 instead of 1971 or 1976 makes a HUGE difference.
So too does the issue of contracts and ability to pitch for an entire season. No longer the horse every five days as ex-Phillies GM Ed Wade once claimed, Schilling says he will not be able to go to spring training for a team to compete for a job. A better scenario, says Schilling, is a post-All Star return to a team in the playoff race. But of course, that's putting the cart before the horse.
Nevertheless, it is an interesting to think hypothetically. Let's suppose the Phillies are in a similar position in 2009 as they are today - one where they lead the division but starting pitching is still a glaring weakness - do you take a chance and sign up Schilling for a second-half run?
Clearly it's one of those low-risk/high-reward situations that general managers love so much (hello, Kris Benson!), but in Schilling's case the intriguing part is his history not just as a big-game pitcher, but also as a pitcher for the Phillies. Though his regular season statistics aren't shoo-in Hall-of Fame numbers (he'll get in), his body of work in the playoffs and World Series place him with the biggest names in the sport...
And that was before the bloody sock.
Here's one more question to ponder about Schilling until his future is decided: which cap does he wear on his Hall-of-Fame plaque?
Actually, this question is probably more apt... how long until Schilling is working on baseball broadcasts? Aside from big-time outings in big games, Schilling's legacy will be that of a guy who liked to gab just a little bit. In fact there may have been the rare occasion where he did not rehearse his interviews in the mirror beforehand. One time at Fenway Park I wandered over to the home team dugout to search out Schilling where I was told by a teammate to, "follow the cameras."
Guess what? That's where he was.